A Letter to Mohamed

AT / BE / TN / 2013 / AT / 35’ “Free since January 14, 2011”—that’s what it says on the T-shirts that the people proudly wore for a while in Tunisia. It was on this day that despot Ben Ali left the country and a new history of freedom began, from which Christine Moderbacher takes random samples in her documentary film Lettre à Mohamed. For example, there are the children who play in the ruins of a building on the wall of which someone has sprayed a polemic statement: “Stealing from the people to build such an ugly shack.” Under Ben Ali, a small elite brazenly became rich at the cost of the people, now there is hope for freedom, democracy, justice, and (this aspect, too, plays an important role), the return of tourism. What might freedom look like?